Submitted by “GIMP 2.8 has been talked about for more than a year and back in January there was a GIMP 2.8 release schedule by Martin Nordholts that had set the final release for the 27th of December. That date has now passed and, sadly, this major update to this leading open-source graphics program is still not close to being released.”
Odd; this news item doesn’t link to anything that states that which the item is claiming. Page 2 items in general are just a direct quote from the article being linked to. In this case, this is more like a page 1 article that is making its own statement. Who is making the claim that GIMP 2.8 is struggling to make it out of the door? The submitter? Where is the proof; URLs, we need URLs!
I agree, the linked article contradicts the statements in the story, i.e. :
“a GIMP 2.8 release schedule by Martin Nordholts that had set the final release for the 27th of December”
According to the link, the 27th December date was an estimated date, not a ‘set … final’ date. More over it was an estimate that was made 12 months in advance, so it is hardly surprising that it was not accurate.
But lets keep an eye on it.
I think, the 2.8 release will making trouble, and they will need another year…
Nah, im just guessing. Maybe it is ready next thursday.
I fixed it. Our new editor having some problems there – not a big deal, considering our backend editor
.
Patience is a virtue they say. I don’t see as it matters too much if it takes even another year to be released as long as it is stable and implemented correctly. Personally, I would rather wait a while for a improved release than have to put up with a rushed and slightly buggy one. For the number of developers working on the project I think they do a great job and a superhuman effort. I extend my thanks and gratitude to these people, keep up the great work and don’t feel pressured to release something you feel is not ready. We will all benefit from this next release.
Sorry for the inconvenience ! ^^’ In the initial submission, there were no URLs whatsoever, so I had no idea where it was coming from. I thought that everything was written by the submitter, and just added a link to the original announcement by Martin Nordholts, thinking that it would be enough. Next time, I’ll ask for more details.
Edited 2011-01-09 14:22 UTC
Oops, that was my bad actually. I new I forgot something.
Read the developer list.
http://lists.xcf.berkeley.edu/lists/gimp-developer/2011-January/026…
I’m gonna take a guess why.
Incremental improvements on the 2.0 version has less priority with more development focus on the 3.0 with the said next generation imaging core and one window interface.
You don’t need to guess. All you need is to read
Incremental improvements on the 2.0 version has less priority with more development focus on the 3.0 with the said next generation imaging core and one window interface.
Mmmmm..no. Single-window interface and all the other improvements happen in 2.8. They haven’t even started development on a 3.0.
I think there are a great number of hackers out there who could help on the 2.8 release. But it’s a bit hard to find any reference on exactly what to help out on.
Compare with the Blender Project, quite instantly you find a “Todo” section on the developer pages with items to begin chewing on.
The same for Gnome, their Release Planning pages links to a bugzilla with all bugs needed to be fixed for 3.0 to be released.
GIMP Is down 2 key developers and is in need of GTK experts to get it out the door.
My big concern about GIMP 2.8 is that the single-window mode appears to be exactly what was asked for (and nothing more) without any thought as to whether there was a way to reconcile the two user groups’ needs… so I think I’ll have to continue using WM hackery to force GIMP to behave in a comfortable fashion. (Fake-docked tool palette and image on the left-hand monitor, tool options on the right)
Had they just made it possible to dock/tear panes in arbitrary ways and defaulted new installations to docking it all together, I think everyone would be happy. (I’m not happy because the tool palette in GIMP 2.6 functions ONLY as a dock host, the image window can’t be used as a dock host, and multiple columns require multiple windows)
Edited 2011-01-09 14:42 UTC
Your concerns are understandable, but invalid. The single-window mode is entirely optional. It’s up to you whether you want using it or not.
As for dockables, 2.8 actually has lots of improvements there, including docking side by side. So you can actually take e.g. Tools Options dialog and dock it to the right from Toolbox. Or you can keep Toolbox in the left side all alone, and then dock Layers to the left of the usual right group of docks so you can always see all the complex hierarchy of layers. It works just fine in both modes.
I’m aware that single-window mode is optional. I hadn’t heard of the docking improvements.
Do you know if the docking behaviours of the tool palette and image windows have been extended so I could have the layout and behaviour of the single window mode layout shown in all the screenshots but with the right-hand column (layers, options, etc.) as a separate window?
I want to approximate what a 1680×1050 monitor would give me using a pair of 1280×1024 LCDs in a Xinerama setup and I’d hate to have to use WM rules to redefine “maximized” as “width of the monitor plus X to push the right column onto the other monitor”.
(My tablet has a widescreen aspect ratio, so that layout avoids the need to use xf86-input-wacom’s monitor-switching pseudo-gesture)
Yes, absolutely. You can enable single-window mode with toolbox attached to the main window and still have a floating dock with layers and suchlike. Right now saving your preferred layout doesn’t work, but it will be fixed for 2.8, of course.
My big concern about GIMP 2.8 is that the single-window mode appears to be exactly what was asked for (and nothing more) without any thought as to whether there was a way to reconcile the two user groups’ needs… so I think I’ll have to continue using WM hackery to force GIMP to behave in a comfortable fashion. (Fake-docked tool palette and image on the left-hand monitor, tool options on the right)
As was said by another poster, single-window mode can be toggled on or off at your own will. You can use whichever mode you prefer. Secondly, it’s not only “what was asked for and nothing more”: they’ve actually gone ahead and done lots of work on improving the workflow and even implemented new UI features to make using GIMP more enjoyable.
There was a blogpost a good while back that showed and explained some of the new and improved things, too bad I don’t remember where it was :/
Anyways, in short, I think you’re worrying about nothing
I wonder, what is the point of writing precise information, when subsequent rewrites get things wrong in every single aspect?
The date was not set in January 2010, it was revisited three times after that, last time — in June 2010. This is mentioned in the original article.
Neither was it a final date — it was a rough estimation. The point of it was to get an idea, when GIMP 2.8 could be released given thiongs that are considered doable for 2.8.
Some tasks were postponed till 2.10 (or 3.0, whichever will be next), and some were implemented for 2.8 instead (like Cairo based rendering for tools and various bits of UI).
Some estimations were incorrect (like aforementioned Cairo based rendering which took twice as little time than expected), and some were spot on.
Come on, OSNews, you can do better than that.
I’ve noticed many submission on software not accepted while things such as totalfinder and this story about Gimp or political tirades.
Does the editors only accept news about software if it falls in their (very) narrow interest field?
OSnews has hangups or reluctance about posting hardware news, application news and even some operating system news also except if they find it interesting.
I know i submit(ted) them and see other headlines in the submission fields as well which I then google and find very interesting.
For instance
What about the release of Secunia PSI 2 that was submitted. Is this not important?
What about DDR4 RAM and a new wireless SATA announced a few days ago? This is not minor hardware news.
Edited 2011-01-09 15:08 UTC
For instance
What about the release of Secunia PSI 2 that was submitted. Is this not important?
What about DDR4 RAM and a new wireless SATA announced a few days ago? This is not minor hardware news.
While Secunia PSI 2 isn’t all that big news I do agree on DDR4. Especially since DDR4 slashes power-consumption by quite a bit compared to DDR3 or earlier revisions and thus will have a large impact on mobile devices. It would have interested several parties, and I am somewhat disappointed there was nothing about it here.
Considering there are ten million of these kinds of tools, no. You’d have to make a strong case as to why this one is more important than all its equivalents – and you didn’t.
Also, I think we can all agree that the GIMP is in a whole different ballpark.
I didn’t see it in the submission queue. Even if it was there- we have to choose our battles. We’re not Engadget or Ars, with boatloads of funding and a team the size of Texas. The OSNews team is basically me – and that’s it. I do 95-99% of the editorial work, and expecting me to be able to cover everything is not reasonable.
I do my best, but if I have to make choices, then hell yes I’m going to choose the things that interest me the most.
In 10 years, the amount of improvement in Gimp has been extremely little. Compared to other succesful open source apps like Blender, I really start to wonder if the problem of it is lack of management or just little interest by the main developers.
I just can’t understand why no gimp developers are sponsored to work by a foundation, or even go into donation campaings, specially given how Photoshop is considered to be the most important application lacking under open source OSs and gimp is the most mature graphics editing package.
It’s like the authors just don’t care, or the codebase is way too bloated/horrible to work or something, wish I knew!
The trouble with gimp is actually piracy of photoshop…
Photoshop is seen as the tool to have by anyone doing any kind if (often trivial) graphics manipulation, as such there are thousands of people using photoshop who really have no need to, and most of them are using pirated copies because their needs do not justify the cost of actually buying photoshop.
Most photoshop users could actually do everything they need with gimp, and the extra users would serve to spur gimp development forwards.
The best thing for gimp right now, would be for adobe to clamp down on piracy.
Was I a Windows user, I would choose Paint.NET (Paint Dot Net) as my graphics tool instead of Gimp.
But no, I’m a Linux user. I mainly use Gimp but am looking forward to see Krita – KDE’s answer to Gimp – take the needed steps forward to become a usable tool.
Gimp’s UI is cluttered and I don’t feel comfortable using it. They fiddled with it for the 2.6 release and it got just worse.
If you want a simple Paint.NET-like tool for Linux, just use Pinta. Nobody’s forcing you to use GIMP, you know
And Krita will probably not help you: it’s a painting app now.
Painting is what I wanna do. I mostly need to create graphics for my web projects. The only image manipulation I perform is scaling and cropping photos.
For scaling, cropping, colour adjustment, brightness & contrats of photos, use digikam.
For creating static graphics for web projects, use Krita & Karbon (each where appropriate, or combine elements from each in a single composition).
http://www.koffice.org/karbon/
http://www.koffice.org/karbon/features/
http://www.koffice.org/karbon/karbon-screenshots/
http://krita.org/features
http://krita.org/component/content/article/9-krita-updates/66-krita…
Krita is probably the best available painting application for Linux.
http://www.koffice.org/krita/
If painting is what you want to do, Krita is likely to be the best Linux tool to do it.
http://krita.org/showcase
Edited 2011-01-10 05:55 UTC
I wouldn’t call Paint.NET a simple painting tool, it has layers and is catching up in features. Most users prefer it to The Gimp.
http://www.techairlines.com/2010/01/15/gimp-vs-paint-net-image-edit…
Pinta is NOT a paining app? Since when?
http://pinta-project.com/
Yep, it is a painting app. It has low aims (it aims to be simple), yet it ends up being simplistic.
It is still in early development.
As a painting application, pinta isn’t a patch on Krita.
PS: Even worse, Pinta requires Mono.
Edited 2011-01-10 06:06 UTC
I never said that. So the person you are arguing against is, in fact, yourself
But now that you mention it, Pinta is in fact a general purpose graphics editor with very basic painting related feature set, clearly not a specialised tool such as MyPaint or Krita (and most lkely for a good reason).
So what is the point that you are trying to make?
Here was your original post.
To me, it read like you first saying that “if you wanted a painting app use pinta” … and then going on to say that “Krita would be no godd for you because it is only a painting app”.
I thought … WTF?
With your response now … I have absolutely no idea what you actually intended to say. Regardless, you didn’t manage to get your original message across, whatever it was.
He’s saying “Pinta is like Paint.net”; to read in to this “Pinta is a painting program” you’d have to first establish that “Paint.net is a painting program” which is a matter for some debate, at least.
Because you didn’t follow the thread. When taken out of context, anything can be understood completely wrong. Just follow the context the next time
I have never used photoshop, Really never. I have used Gimp/Inksacep/Dia and OODraw and everything fitted my purposes. For hardcore Image Processing I use ImageJ and Price.app . I managed to survive the last 8 years without photoshop. And for me Gimp has been improving performancewise very very fast. I still would like a TCL/TK gfx program wrapping around the amazing work done in ImageMagick. Otherwise I am completely satisfied with this open source product.
You however are not majority.
The way I see it there are two major reasons why even big projects (GIMP is not the only one) don’t have many dedicated contributors.
1. Projects don’t communicate what’s happening to their user bases.
2. Users tend to take, not give.
The first one is now being addressed by GIMP team, the second is in the hands of community.
From my experience and the experience of those I’ve talked to, there IS some element of arrogance and hubris in the mix.
For example, when I posted a polite feature request asking for a checkbox to restore the GIMP 2.4 behaviour regarding floating and unfloating selections (because I use it heavily and the new behaviour requires a menu click or a key combo that requires two hands when RightCtrl = Compose), they called me rude and marked it RESO INVALID.
The people I’ve talked to have described the project managers, politely, as “difficult to work with”.
I’ll second that.
Someone politely explained in a thread how the term “The Gimp” is a derogatory term in the US and the project managers threw a hissy fit over the mere suggestion of changing the name.
God forbid such a classy name like “The Gimp” be changed. Who knows how many US donations they would have received otherwise.
Might it be because people tend to get tired hearing same arguments in 1234567th time? Everything means something else somewhere. If you choose to understand “GIMP” as “gimp”, not as acronym, the offence is clearly self-inflicted.
Oh is that the problem? I’m just not choosing to understand it?
I’m going create a soda called negro-cola and anyone offended by the name just needs to choose to understand that negro means black in spanish. I could find an innocuous name but I’ll be a stubborn ass instead and alienate the largest market. Pure genius.
Indeed so.
Exactly. As a matter of fact, commercial companies rebrand some of their products locally to make the names sound good on local markets. Those who don’t often fail in sales. But GIMP is not a commercial product. It’s there because few people out there care to maintain and improve it. You are free to express your ideas and, as my experience tells me, you will be listened to. But you are not to dictate these people what and how to do things until you personally participate in making GIMP happen. It’s called doacracy.
There’s too much talking and too litle doing. Telling developers to rename GIMP for millionth time is not a contribution, it’s a distraction from things that actually matter: features, usability, performance.
And by the way the largest market isn’t English speaking. Perhaps you haven’t noticed, but in XXI century it’s rather Chinese. And this is not exactly a market, we are talking about free software after all.
Last time I tried it it was hiding layer blending modes from user making it a complete PITA to do even basic things. That’s what i call simple.
The US is the largest software market for $0 software as well. Financial contributions to open source projects are disproportionately from the US. Why risk losing contributions from the largest source? What is the gain from keeping the current name?
The largest software market is the US market. China has a large population but their GDP is still about a third of the US.
I’m afraid the message didn’t get through. Let me try it once again, for the last time: the issue is not in amount of donations and where they come from. It’s in communicating requirements of the project to its user base. This is No.1 priority to fix.
Thus far the project was worked on by people who are attached to it whatever the name is. And this is exactly what the project needs: dedicated contributors, people who do things. I’ve been watching the project for a little over a decade and I’ve yet to see someone who argued about the name and still contributed to the project.
Which only proves that there are people who talk and argue, and there are people who do. If some people can’t let go of self-inflicted offense, there’s not much there can be done for them.
The question is not about gain. It never was, it never will be. There is a whole infrastructure around GIMP: websites, books and so on. There’s no gain in messing the whole thing up just because some people are undereducated to know what an acronym is.
I see that you are set in your views, I don’t think you’ll be able to see the point I’m making.
Edited 2011-01-10 05:48 UTC
Well donations are obviously somewhere on the priority list given that you thanked someone in this thread for donating and noted it would be possible to hire someone else with enough revenue. You also acknowledged that GIMP needs more people and you haven’t denied that open source donations come disproportionately from the US.
I’m going to make a program that works with The Gimp called The Fag….Fast Animation Generator. Any Americans that get offended need to just understand the acronym. If you get offended you just aren’t choosing to understand it properly so it is your fault.
I could get the project farther if I hired someone else so Americans please donate to The Fag.
You still don’t understand. Money doesn’t magically solve anything. The GIMP team learnt it the hard way in mid-2000s with Mark Shuttleworth’s bounty. One day you will learn it too.
If I go around denying everything people say without linking to proofs, I’ll never have time to get anything done. You are, needless to say, free to make any conclusions you like of that.
Why stop at ‘negro-cola’ and ‘fag’? Why not compare it to ‘FUCKING WHORE!’? I mean ‘Gimp’ is such a LOADED word after all.
Get over yourself, really.
FWIW: China’s GDP is > $9 Trillion.
The US GDP is > $14 Trillion.
That’s with PPP factored in, not straight GDP.
And China also has 4 times more inhabitants than the US. Lots of poor people a good software market do not make
From what it seems it’s pretty much due to a very low number of developers. From this :http://libregraphicsworld.org/news.php?readmore=667
we learn that there are 3 core developers, one of which have been busy with other things since spring 2010. Given the insanely low amount of developers for such a huge piece of software I’m amazed at how much they’ve actually been able to do. From what I’ve read there something around 20 developers working on Phothoshop, full-time, handpicked for their expertize.
A donation campaign is a good idea!
If they did, I would definitely give them some money!
Donations never stopped being gratefully accepted.
http://www.gimp.org/donating/
Edited 2011-01-09 18:32 UTC
I just gave 20 dollars!
Thank you
The problem is not wether there are donations, but donation campaigns that work have something useful in exchange for their users.
Example: “Donate enough $$ to hire one or more full developers for a year” will definitely attrack more donations than just “please support us by donating”
Also there exist non profit foundations, which take care of promotion donations on not only users but companies that may find useful to have a more advance graphic editing application.
But gimp developers are not the marketing types (which is to be expected), so it seems they never really bother to do this. They even seem to have entered Google SOC but didn’t even bother integrating the contributions!
Edited 2011-01-09 21:03 UTC
OK, you make two statements that need clarification.
1. Donations and sponsoring development. Yes, direct sponsoring of one programmer working full time or two part-timers seems absolutely doable. Both Blender and Ardour do it (in different ways). But to get the ball rolling it’s best to register foundation and then you deal with a bunch of paperwork, and for that you need certain experience and time. Which is what programmers don’t habitally do, as you probably very well know. Having a dedicated full-time developer has already been discussed and nobody seems to be against it. So the primary question is who wants to take responsibility for organization and do all the paperwork. So far nobody volunteered.
2. Integrating GSoC projects. It is true that some code has not been merged yet (e.g. GPU-side GEGL buffers) or merged partly (e.g. vector layers). The reason for that is because GSoC students tend to stop working on their code after deadlines, whereas contribution presumes dedication. One of GSoC2009 projects code doesn’t even compile. So the question is not about developers not bothering to merge projects, the question is how to get people finish their code and participate in its integration. Which is, once again, all about dedication and commitment.
A least, that’s what post at Libre Graphics World says:
“Unfortunately the GIMP team that has always been short-handed became even more shorthanded during spring 2010, when Martin became too busy to contribute to the project on daily basis the way he used to, thus leaving the team with just 2.5 dedicated developers. This is quite unfortunate, since the only big chunk of work left to do for 2.8 is the optional single-window mode, for which the final design spec is also missing at the time.”
http://libregraphicsworld.org/news.php?readmore=667
Lies, there is millions of open source coders in interwebz contributing all time thanks to Power of Open Source. Real reason why it’s not out is because they are making this amazing new feature that will leave Photoshop light years behind.
Huh, so that’s what’s going on.
Single-window mode is THE feature I want, so here’s hoping they don’t release 2.8 without it. (Well, layer grouping helps too.)
This is good news. Once, I went to the GIMP channel to ask for help. In return, I got scolded, insulted, offended and asked to never come back, for no apparent reason. It was a question about image equalization done differently in Photoshop, that I was not being able to do it in GIMP (because it does differently).
Apart from this, I was also accused of not respecting the developers in the channel, for citing Photoshop. Some dude got really angry and pushed it all over.
Long life GIMP! Specially now that you are entering the comatose state.
Hey, I really do sympathize. I think it’s retarded of a project manager or forum moderator to tell users to f*** off or to delete threads (I didn’t say “posts”). Whatever way it’s done, there’s gonna be someone offended.
There’s one thing that I lament, solely on the basis of my experience as a long-time Opera user and forum member: the fact that they seem to not listen to what users ask for or say. If you won’t implement, just say why and/or express your stance; it won’t do any harm. I’ve already said it here in a comment months ago and I’ve been lambasted by one of the reader who thought my example features were the most useless ever.
But I still think that communication with the users doesn’t hurt a project. Of course, they don’t get to dictate where the project goes or what feature is absolute priority but ultimately, all projects are to be used by users. They have their say in what is done for them, free software or not.
Digressing, I almost forgot my second idea: yes, you were unduly berated but it’s no reason to wish the project harm or keep a grudge against them. It would be better to wish the … (fill in the blank) who you had to deal with gets his hands full with whatever else and leaves the project. With this making news and the word spreading and people being shocked to know about the size of the staff as I have been, I wish some contributors would find in their life the time and dedication that this emblematic project needs.
Jason Bourne would never let it happen. He’d just shoot everybody dead. You must be an impostor
From my experience here is how these discussions usually go. Someone pops up and starts talking about this or that Photoshop feature not quite explaining what it does or explaining, but then saying that GIMP should do it just like that otherwise there’s no chance for GIMP to be used seriously. Having heard that argument for last 10+ years developers fret and all hell goes loose.
It’s how 99% of such discussions go. The person who started it would never admit (s)he could have done a better job at asking the question, because “the client is always right”.
If you were one of the 1% when you were really polite, then of course I’m sorry to hear that.
“Someone was mean to me on the GIMP channel so now I will be just as immature and hold a grudge against an entire project, that will show them!!!”
This was not something done by one person. There were several developers jumping the wagon. I mean, CORE DEVELOPERS telling me and others to fuck off. Several, up to five or more people. CORE ones.
I am not *holding* a grudge against GIMP. But I think it’s funny how they’re struggling now. Specially when you treat users like shit, that’s what I mean.